Her hips rocked in tight circles, slowly, seductively, as if an erotic dancer had taken over her body. She sashayed to stand beside the man with the gun and raised her chin.
The chill in her voice stopped his heart. “Eyes. Down.”
CHAPTER 5
“Joshua Carter no longer exists.” Liv gave him a second to absorb that, though the firestorm thrashing in his eyes told her he might need more than a pregnant pause.
Her heart rate threatened to rob the strength from her knees, and that kind of weakness pissed her the fuck off.
She gathered control over her features, arranging them into the stoniest expression she had. “For the next ten weeks, your name is whatever I want it to be.”
“Let me go.” Despite the pallor blanching his golden complexion, he glared down at her with the composure of a fearless man.
His maturity was emphasized by the whiskers darkening his square jaw and the carved contour of his rigid muscles.
She needed to think of him as a boy. Boys were malleable, unsteady, and less attractive. “For now, your name is boy.”
Standing by the locked door as if its proximity could save him, he set his jaw, green eyes sparking with defiance. Van kept his position beside her, the gun level with the boy’s head.
“Eyes down, boy.” Not that she expected him to obey. That progression had to be paved with his blood and tears. The thought stabbed a terrible pain in her chest.
His unwavering stare continued to press against her skin, and there was so much force in it, she didn’t think she could endure it much longer. She would, though. She would do anything for the hope that awaited her at the end of the night. The hope that would feed her famished heart.
In the center of the room, the girl remained folded on her knees. Since her training neared completion, she could demonstrate some expectations for the boy.
Liv approached her, injecting her command with unfeeling iron. “On the cot, slave. Cuffed.”
The girl crawled to the cot and lay on her back, hands reaching above her head to grasp the handcuffs on the wall. She locked in her wrists. The cuffs connected to steel eyehooks and were sturdy enough to restrain the strongest of struggling slaves.
The boy’s glare ticked between the girl and the gun, tension rippling over the hard lines of his body.
He closed his eyes, opened them, and met Liv’s gaze, nostrils flaring. “I kissed you.”
Her insides tightened, and Van’s finger twitched on the trigger. Just a twitch. Van’s role that night was to keep quiet and ensure her success in confining the boy in the box. The rational part of her was glad Van was there. If she were alone with the boy, she might’ve anchored her thoughts in the intimacy they’d shared. She might’ve weakened under the resentment of her betrayal.
Van’s presence kept her frigid, focused mask in place. But he was undoubtedly raging with jealousy. Too damned bad. He knew the job and what it involved.
She reached up and slid back his hood, caressing his scar. The affection catered to his possessiveness, calming his inward battle, evidenced in the subtle slackening of his finger on the trigger. But unveiling his expression also served as a warning for the boy. Van outmatched him in muscle and cruelty, and under the fluorescents, she knew Van’s eyes were blades of silver and cut just as deep.
The boy swallowed. “You said something about—” He gritted his teeth. “You intend to sell me? Like a…a slave? This isn’t a game?”
No way did the boy fully grasp what was going on. He was probably still clinging to the hope of release when they were done with him.
“Let him go, Liv.” Van scratched his neck. “You got the wrong kid.”
While Van was attempting to win the boy’s trust, it didn’t quite soften his razor eyes. He sucked at being the passive captor, though to his credit, he’d never had to watch from the sidelines before. His sadistic control-freakery was probably tearing him up inside.
“Just stand there and hold the gun like you’re supposed to, Van.” She met the boy’s steadfast expression with her own. “You will be trained. Then you will be sold for sex.”
“I can pay.” He raised his stubborn chin. “I can come up with the money and cover whatever they’re paying you.”
Hell, he didn’t have a dollar, and certainly not two million of them. His illogical offer meant he was still in the panic stage. She remembered the confusion and how the uncontrollable trembling and desire to escape had made her crazed, hyper-aware, and desperate.
Witnessing him experience the first horrific phases of capture was why she’d avoided conversation in the truck. She hadn’t wanted to connect with him as his equal, as a friend. Connections like that birthed concern and sympathy and other touchy-feely detriments to her arrangement.
But she’d returned his kiss. At the time, she’d reasoned it was a luring tactic. Until their lips separated, and she was left with a lingering taste of something she’d never have.
“Follow me.” She didn’t wait for the boy’s obedience. Van’s gun would ensure it. She strode to the soundproof wall that divided the attic into two chambers.
At the door, she punched her code into the keypad. She and Van had separate codes to move through the rooms within the house, but only she had a code for this one.
She walked through the long, narrow room. Once her prison, it was now her sanctuary, her bedroom, and the only place she could escape Van. When Mr. E promoted her from slave to deliverer, he allowed her request to hold the only combination to the room. And why not? He could reach through any door with the threat he held over her. But Van could not.
Tossing her phone on the threadbare mattress in the corner, she moved past the open shower, toilet, and sink along the front wall. Reaching the coffin-sized pine box opposite the unenclosed bathroom, she turned and waited for the boy to join her.
There was an illusion that he could walk freely into the room, but it was psychological bullshit. Van wouldn’t shoot if the boy slipped-up, but any number of the non-lethal weapons hidden on his person insured compliance.
The brick at her back made the attic feel inescapable, as was intended, but the true barrier was the sound-deadening concrete forms veneering the exterior walls. Its effectiveness was tested by her own lungs during her first year in this room. No one had come to save her.
The boy crossed the threshold with Van’s gun at his back. His arms lolled at his sides, his expression growing more wary and alert with each step. What would he do? What was he thinking? Planning?
He scanned her room—the room she would be sharing with him—and his gaze seized on the phone on the mattress, flicked to the horizontal box, and returned to the phone.
“The phone is locked.” She kept her posture still and straight, her voice detached.
A storm of frantic ideas churned in his icy eyes. He could try to dial 911, but the modifications Mr. E put on her phone disabled things like the camera and the ability to make emergency calls while it was locked. This allowed her to keep her phone with her, one of his requirements. He used it to track her every call, her every move. At the end of the day, she was just as trapped as the boy.
Van nudged him with the gun, moving him forward.
The boy stopped a foot away from her position beside the box. His breath evened in what seemed to be an attempt at deference. Too many emotions clouded his face to predict what he was planning. But his choices were no longer his.